


The World Is Ending...The World is Beginning

by starconvoy



Category: The Railway Series - W. Awdry, Thomas the Tank Engine & Friends, Thomas the Tank Engine - All Media Types
Genre: Fear of Death, Gen, Implied/Referenced Character Death
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-09
Updated: 2019-01-09
Packaged: 2019-10-06 23:45:02
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,458
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17354915
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/starconvoy/pseuds/starconvoy
Summary: Spencer (formerly Silver Link) almost didn't make it. But he was saved just in time. humansof-york.tumblr.com





	The World Is Ending...The World is Beginning

The world was ending.

Silver Link sat in his shed at Kings Cross staring blankly at the doors.

The world was ending.

“You’ll be leaving for Doncaster to…wait…in a few weeks.”

The world was ending.

“I’m sorry, old boy. It was good working with you.”

The world was…

<>

The past few days had been a whirlwind of fear for Silver Link and the other steam engines at Kings Cross. The end had come for their kind after ruling the rails for several decades. There were rumors that a few engines here and there were being pulled aside for preservation, but it seemed that no one could predict who would be chosen.

“You’ll make it, Silver Link.”

“You’re the first of your class; they’d want to keep you around.”

Other engines had offered those kind words, but in the end, the only news of an A4 being preserved was about…

_Mallard._

Damn him.

That first night after hearing the news, Silver Link cried himself to sleep. He’d never shown such emotion in front of his shed-mates, but at this point, there was no more reputation left to uphold. The bitterness, the anger, the fear…it all kept flowing out of him and he felt so ashamed.

_What about me? I was the first…_

_Sir Nigel told me I was so beautiful…_

_He told me I would be looked after…_

The man didn’t lie to him. The world simply changed. The wars. The strain of work. The new developments within the railway. The shifting of men within the LNER. The formation of BR. All those things had passed by in a blur, leaving Silver Link and his kin lost and overwhelmed by the end.

The world was not as it should.

After the news of Mallard being preserved, all the engines were afraid. It seemed he would be the only “famous” engine being saved.

“Well, he did set the record.”

“Too bad about his attitude though.”

“Oh, he’ll probably declare himself a god at this point. He thinks he’s practically king, but now he’ll have ascended to something else.”

“Gresley above, help us.”

“If he was going along with us, you know the Golden Sheds wouldn’t open their doors for him.”

Where did bad engines go? If not the Golden Sheds, then…where?

Silver Link tried hard not to listen to the old shunter tell his gruesome tale of the Eternal Scrapyards. Miles and miles of rusting corpses, waiting for the end, but never finding it. The shunter said that the suffering and pain was so severe, engines cried out for the cutters to come with their torches. Silver Link closed his eyes at that point and tried to sleep, a sick feeling in his boiler. That night he dreamed of being on one of the Out of Use lines, next to the rusting bodies of his brothers and sisters. He jolted awake when he recognized Sir Ralph Wedgewood’s broken face, ruined by the bomb that had fallen on him.

_Gresley save him. I hope he’s not there…_

Maybe it would have been better that way. Sir Ralph would never know of the fate of his siblings…that is, until their spirits begin to make appearances on the other side.

Silver Link felt a tear roll down his cheek again.

No, death by accident would have been too painful, too harsh. He’d heard of engines whose boilers had exploded and the carnage it left behind. Boiler tubes flying every which way, their crews burned by the steam and fire that they once controlled. The gore and horror was something he’d never experienced himself, but he knew it left a mark on an engine’s soul forever.

But what about the cutters?

Sometimes in the workshops, the torches were necessary depending on repairs. They hurt as they seared into an engine’s metal body, allowing the workers to pry them apart. Silver Link could only imagine what having one’s entire…

_Enough._

Tears flowed freely now. It was a common thing these days, after the daily trains had run and he was left alone. None of his siblings were near to give him comfort…not that he had much of a relationship with any of them anymore.

_Damn our family pride…_

Engines from other railways swore that each Gresley engine was built with too much pride mixed into the sheets of metal that made their frames. Looking back, Silver Link had to agree. After his record was broken again and again, he began to grow more distant. He couldn’t feel proud of his siblings. The jealousy burned at him, it’s touch worse than any torch. But then…1938.

_Gresley damn him._

The ‘darling jewel’ of the family. Four months out of Doncaster and pulling off a world record. Suddenly Mallard’s name was on everyone’s lips and it made Silver Link want to cough up boiler sludge. Mallard was a bastard, nothing more. His ego was through the roof and it came down to a silent agreement among the rest of them:

“He’s not one of us.”

<>

Silver Link thought about his cousin, bold and brash like he was in his early days, but several years older than him. He too had been sorely hurt by Mallard’s attitude and had withdrawn from his siblings as well, so he heard. After their progenitor, Great Northern, passed, he was never the same. The spark of arrogance and snark was gone from his eyes, replaced by a cloud of gloom.

They hadn’t talked much, but Silver Link knew that Flying Scotsman was a kindred spirit. He was more than aware of Scotsman’s grudge towards the A4s, especially after they took his namesake train from him, but he managed to see past that when it came to Silver Link. Their conversations were light-hearted and never dwelt on the past hurt.

A few days before he left for Doncaster, Silver Link asked about him.

“Will he be saved?”

“I’m afraid not. He’s headed for the same fate as you.”

Unbelievable.

The engine who had pushed the LNER into the spotlight…bound for scrap?

Silver Link was stunned into silence.

<>

The day came.

“Ironic, isn’t it?” Scotsman asked him quietly.

“What?”

“They send us to our birthplace to die.”

Silver Link could not respond. He gave Scotsman a mournful look.

“I’m sorry,” Scotsman said in a small voice. Tears brimmed in his eyes.

“Hold a berth for me when you get there.”

“Where?” Silver Link asked, his voice cracking with sorrow.

“The Golden Sheds in the Sky.”

_Gresley save him._

The run to Doncaster was quick. In spite of the winter weather, the rails were clean and there were green signals the entire way. When they arrived, Silver Link looked around mournfully.

_They send us to our birthplace to die…_

Is this how it was for humans? Did they go back to their birthplaces to die? No, of course not, Silver Link mused as the workmen directed him over to a siding. They could go anywhere they pleased.

The weather grew colder that night and the lack of fire in his firebox left him shivering. He’d never felt so cold before, not even during the wars when resources were slim and maintenance was hardly priority.

Silver Link shivered against the wind and closed his eyes, thinking back to his final conversation with Scotsman again.

_Hold a berth for me when you get there…The Golden Sheds in the Sky._

<>

The period of waiting began. The new year came and passed, and still he waited. He was shuffled around a few times by a diesel shunter who refused to meet his eyes as more and more of them came. Familiar faces, broken and sad. Unfamiliar faces filled with fear or anger.

_Gresley save us…please._

The season began to grow warmer, but it did nothing for the pain. Months of standing still left Silver Link with a constant ache in his frames, his wheels felt stiff like rocks, and his firebox remained cold. He’d long since lost his appetite for coal and his thirst for water and was instead filled with numbness. Some days, his mind felt full of fog and other days, he didn’t remember where he was.

The shunter was wrong, he thought on one of his clearer days. The Everlasting Scrapyards are here…on this earth. They’ve made our cradles into our graves.

Summer came and the heat blistered at the rust spots that formed. They burned and left him feeling ill. The first hot day there, he was sure he would be sick all over himself, but his boiler was empty and there was nothing to release.

Gradually the weather grew cool again as fall began to settle in. How long had he waited? Days? Weeks? Months? It must have been months, considering the change in seasons. Silver Link spent most of his time asleep anyway, lost in a fog, practically comatose among the others waiting.

Waiting…

Waiting…

<>

Some days he dreamt. The dreams never stayed in his memory…except one. But was it a memory, rather than a dream?

<>

On the day he entered traffic, Sir Nigel had given him his name.

“Silver Link. My goodness, you’re beautiful.”

“Silver…Link…”

“Yes, son, ‘Silver Link’. Your name is from a poem.”

“Poem…?”

“Yes, lad. ‘It is the secret sympathy,/The silver link, the silken tie,/Which heart to heart, and mind to mind,/In body and in soul can bind.’”

Silver Link hadn’t truly understood his words at the time and could only offer a smile. That had been enough to enchant the chief mechanical engineer who declared that Silver Link would be the fastest engine in the world.

He was right for a time.

As time went on, he had asked his driver to read the full poem to him.

“It’s about love, laddie. You wouldn’t understand it.”

“But I want to know. He said that’s where my name came from.”

“Oh, all right then. ‘True love’s the gift that God has given…’”

His driver was right, he didn’t understand. But perhaps he had, just in a different way.

<>

As time dragged on, he grew more and more delirious.

He forgot about his beginnings…his time at Kings Cross…his friends, his family. All he remembered was that he wanted to leave the past behind. He wanted to move on. Whatever he used to be, he no longer was.

What had that one engine told him?

‘Hold a berth for me’? But where? There were no sheds here. Had he reached the destination that other engine was expecting?

Was that other engine here? Silver Link didn’t even know what he looked like anymore; his face was a blur in his memories. He only hoped he wouldn’t start seeing ghosts of scrapped engines running about. Hopefully that engine wouldn’t hold it against him for forgetting what he had told him. Hopefully his ghost wouldn’t come back to haunt him, angry for not saving a space for him.

But where?

<>

The end was near. He knew it.

The engines who had come before were disappearing and not returning to their spots. There were no tears left at this point, no emotions left to conjure up a response to the men moving about and prepping him.

“Wait!”

They stopped as a man came running over.

“Don’t take him just yet.”

“Why? Have they changed their mind about him?”

“Not exactly.”

A hand met his buffer and rubbed it gently.

“I can’t believe it.”

Silver Link opened his eyes as best he could. A man dressed in a sharp suit stood looking up at him.

“Silver Link.”  _He hadn’t heard that name in so long…he’d almost forgotten it was his._

He could offer no response with how weak he was.

The man seemed mesmerized and Silver Link hadn’t any clue why.

“I’ll take him.”

“ _Him_ , sir? He’s bound for—”

“I know what he’s bound for. But I’ll buy him. An engine such as this doesn’t deserve such a fate.”

_What…?_

The foreman shooed the workmen and their tools away before turning to the man to being sorting through the details. They spoke in hushed tones, but from the bits of conversation he could pick up, Silver Link could feel his mind begin to clear.

“…private engine…restored…”

“Re…stored?” he croaked.

The man looked back up at him and smiled. “Yes, Silver Link, I’m going to restore you. It will be just like the day you left Doncaster in the 30s. You’ll be good as new.”

Silver Link’s eyes widened. The foreman hurried off and the man turned his full attention to him.

“You’ll be repainted into your original livery. No more of this drab, BR getup they have you in. You’ll be repaired and look just like your old self.”

“…why?” he whispered.

“You’re going to be my private engine. You’ll have a new life, working for me. I won’t have anyone put you on a museum plinth like they’ve done to your brother. My wife and I own a property in the countryside where you will come to be with us.”

_A new life._

_…to leave the past…behind…?_

Silver Link could barely believe it.

“Thank…you…sir,” he breathed.

The man smiled kindly. “You’re welcome. And forgive me for being rude and not introducing myself. I’m the Duke of Boxford.”

Silver Link did his best to offer a smile in return. He felt more emotion in that moment than he had during his entire time waiting for the end. “Thank you…so much.”

“You will be taken care of, Silver Link.”

As the man began to walk away, a thought crossed Silver Link’s mind.

“Sir,” he called.

“Yes?”

“Could I…change my name?”

The man furrowed his brow. “Change your name? Good heavens, what for?”

“I’ve waited here…for so long. The name…’Silver Link’…holds no value for me…anymore.”

The man studied him closely. “Well, it’s an odd request, but I suppose I’ll consider it. Do you have a new name in mind by chance?”

Silver Link paused. “Ah…no, sir. I hadn’t thought…that far ahead.”

The man nodded. “Well, no matter. You’ve been through quite an ordeal, so I can understand you needing some time to think. If anything, I’ll help you come up with a new name and you’ll be given new nameplates when you’re in the workshop.”

“Thank you, sir.”

<>

The world was no longer ending.

A sleek, silver engine stood inside the workshop, looking eagerly towards the outside.

The world was no longer ending.

“You’re all set now. Off you go.”

The world was no longer ending.

“You’ll make quite the impression out there, Spencer. I’m glad I have you in my care now.”

The world was…beginning.


End file.
